It is our  job to land our clients in magazines and on their covers but this time it ended up being our co-founders, Colin and Brian Cooley, on the cover of a major magazine.

The latest issue of Entrepreneur Magazine (May 2013) features the two brothers, who started their branding and marketing agency in 1999 with the motto “Be Open to Anything.” That attitude has guided them through the years as they have gone from a music and entertainment PR firm to a full-service interactive marketing agency, and most recently, purveyors of well-designed goods sold at their Hermosa Beach retail shop.

As Brian notes in the article, which focuses on advice for entrepreneurs: “I never imagined we’d evolve Wicked+ into a retail brand, but we saw the opportunity and made it happen.”

Look for the magazine on newstands now or read it the tablet version via the Entrepreneur Magazine App.

Wicked+ is now an indispensable component of how The Agency markets itself and its multi-million dollar listings, many of which are among the highest priced homes in the U.S. Our earned and owned media strategy amplifies the reach and frequency of The Agency’s marketing efforts, as well as increase one-to-one engagement with global contacts.

Highlights

Web Design
TheAgencyRE.com – Designed + developed by Wicked+

Print Advertising
Example - Angeleno Interiors magazine ad

Public Relations
We execute both “push” and “pull” techniques that involve pitching media outlets and acting as our own media (via The Agency blog and social media channels) to reinforce The Agency’s brand positioning as a global luxury/lifestyle brand. We consistently secure major media exposure for The Agency, its agents and its listings in International, national and local media.

Mainstream outlets we consistently obtain hits in include:

• Wall Street Journal
• NY Times
• Forbes
• E! Online
• The Hollywood Reporter

Local, Lifestyle + Online – Local, Lifestyle and Online hits include:

• Architectural Digest
• Huffington Post
• Trulia Luxe Blog
• WSJ House of the Day
• AOL Real Estate
• LA Times Home of the Week
• CURBED

Content Strategy + Creation
The Agency Daily: We develop and execute an editorial and content strategy designed to drive significant traffic to the company’s website and reinforce its brand positioning and competitive advantages.

Example:
“60 Minutes” Story on Blue Hole Bay: One of The Agency listings, an island property in the Bahamas, was shown in a “60 Minutes” piece about the sport of freediving. Although the property wasn’t the focus of the story we seized upon the opportunity to make it the focus by writing a blog post about it, and then pitching it out to the media. A number of US and International news sites, including Daily Mail (UK), Yahoo! News and Curbed, picked up on our story, driving tens of thousands of hits to The Agency website and significant exposure for the property.

SEO:
By structuring pages throughout the site to target keywords related to the luxury real estate market and combining that with link-building efforts that include content creation, social media, public relations and internal referrals, Wicked+ has positioned The Agency as one of the premier luxury real estate brands while still only in its infancy. The targeting of long-tail, more specific keywords continues as The Agency’s website expands its reach, consistently drawing more and more traffic to those deeper pages.

Top-ranked long-tail keywords for The Agency include:

• Luxury Real Estate
• Los Angeles Luxury Real Estate
• Beverly Hills Luxury Real Estate
• Beverly Hills Luxury Homes
• Mauricio Umansky

Social Media Marketing
Wicked+ manages all agency branded social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram. We develop initiatives to actively grow The Agency’s audience and the reach of shared content, as well as find meaningful ways to engage with fans.

The World Poker Tour is in a league of its own. For the past 11 years, the tournament and TV broadcast have consistently delivered an experience that is unrivaled in poker and arguably unmatched by many professional sports and gaming leagues. The success can be attributed to the personalities involved, including the tenured team of Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten, and most of all, to the total immersion experience that is offered at every event, both at and away from the tables.

Wicked+ Work: Wicked+ is tasked with telling the story of the WPT experience, not only surrounding each event, but continuously throughout the year through earned media.

Our focus is to reach a greater audience outside of diehard poker fans to increase overall TV interest/viewership and ClubWPT acquisitions. To achieve this goal, Wicked+ is focused on driving people to the WPT site for content, increasing followers/Likes on social media channels, and generate meaningful buzz for the TV program.

Examples

WPT Experience Blog
blog.worldpokertour.com/
Wicked+ designed and developed the WPT Blog and developed a content strategy that showcases the WPT experience, including making stars of WPT players and highlighting their once-in-a-lifetime moments with the brand.

We continue to oversee all content creation for the site.

Mainstream + Non-Endemic Press
Wicked+ handles both traditional and online publicity for the World Poker Tour, securing hits in both mainstream and non-endemic press.

Brief highlights include:

• Wall Street Journal: “WPT Hopes to Export Texas Hold-em to China”
• Hollywood Reporter: “’Weeds’ Writer-Producer Wins Big at World Poker Tour”
• Orange County Register: “World Poker Tour deals its 10th season”

Social Media Marketing

Wicked+ oversees the WPT branded social media channels and develops initiatives to actively grow its audience and find meaningful ways to engage with fans. This includes assisting in status updates and posting of photos, articles and videos; developing content/promotions for Facebook page; and developing hashtag content/promotions for Twitter.

If you’ve ever been to our Wicked+ store at 145 Pier Ave., there’s a good chance you’ve heard our story. The one about how we accidentally started a retail shop that simply sells goods we like (from whole bean coffee to bikes, shirts and skateboards) out of an office we originally subleased as a meeting space for our marketing agency. It’s a story that people inevitably ask us to share with them because they want to know how a store like ours came to be.

When people hear our story — and the passion behind why we sell the products we sell — they are almost always more likely to want to support what we are doing.

The reason why is people want to feel like they are part of something. They want to be in the know and trust and relate to the person they are doing business with. The same goes for anyone selling a product or offering a service. Your customer likes to know where and how your product was made and what makes it unique. They like to know why you do what you do.

We sell Topo Ranch T-shirts, but we aren’t just selling T-shirts. We’re selling an alternative to the everyday surf-brand. We’re selling a T-shirt that is made here in California, embodies the California lifestyle, is 100 percent organic cotton and is designed in Venice Beach by one of the T-shirt company’s owners. It is these things that make the shirt more than just another shirt on a rack, and it’s what resonates with customers who walk into our store.

This focus on storytelling is the same for the clients we work. Take for example, the World Poker Tour, a top-rated poker TV show that hosts poker tournaments around the world. Our work for the World Poker Tour isn’t just about promoting their TV show and tournaments. We see ourselves as storytellers for the brand, and that means sharing stories that make the WPT unlike any other poker enterprise. We do this by giving fans behind-the-scenes looks at the tour and insight into players and the personalities on the show. We use a World Poker Tour branded blog to tell the stories of everyday people who win a chance to compete against their idols and perhaps beat. We then use social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter, to further share these stories.

Another great example of storytelling is the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce. (Disclaimer: Wicked+ worked with the Chamber in launching its blog but all of the content is created by the Chamber and its staff.) The 100-year-old Chamber went from using old-school soliciting efforts to getting current members involved in the outreach process by telling their own stories of how the Chamber has helped them and others in the community. The Chamber has also focused on sharing more stories about its members and events via the Chamber’s blog and Facebook and Twitter accounts. This sharing resonates with local businesses and puts the emphasis on engagement over solicitation, and makes it more likely that others will want to be part of the Chamber.

What’s most powerful about storytelling is when it goes from you telling the story to your customer doing the storytelling. As a customer of many South Bay businesses myself, I tell the story of my favorite shops daily. If someone asks me where to get a cup of coffee, I don’t simply say “get coffee at Planet Earth,” I enthusiastically share their story: “If you’re serious about coffee go to Planet Earth. They have a great roast called Pacific blend and they’ll make it by the cup if you ask for it pour-over style.”

There’s nothing new about storytelling and the effect it can have on your brand. What is relatively new are the numerous social media channels, like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, that allow you to tell your story to a much bigger audience in one fell swoop, status update, video or tweet. These tools allow you to constantly be telling your story, rather than merely promoting. More importantly, they allow you to engage directly with your customers on a regular basis and make them a part of your story. And because your story is always evolving, you always have something new to share, which can further strengthen the connection you have with your customer.

What story are you telling about your company, products and services? Is it resonating with your customers? Are they sharing it with others? And are you providing the best tools, whether online or off, for them to share these stories? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself as you craft your story and share it with others.

The above video produced by Wicked+ and shot/edited by Billy Yang captures Fletcher Dragge, lead guitarist of Pennywise, and the crew from 3rd St. Tattoo as they graffiti the walls of Abigaile just days before the new Hermosa Beach restaurant opened earlier this month. With the sounds of his favorite punk acts blaring in the room and fueled by “PBR and Benadryl,” Dragge, along with 3rd St.’s Andrea, Jeremy and Charles, took to the walls with spray paint and stencils to pay homage to Black Flag and the other punk acts who used to live and play in the space back when it was known as “the Church.”

As seen during an interview in the seminal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, members of Black Flag were paying about 16 bucks a month to rent out a closet in the abandoned Baptist church, rehearsing where they slept and trying to make enough money to buy some food. Several other bands and rotating cast members of the South Bay Hardcore scene also inhabited “the Church,” including the Descendents, Red Cross (later to become Redd Kross due to legal issues), Circle Jerks, and The Last.

Hermosa Beach’s Jed Sanford, owner of Abigaile, wanted to pay homage to the history of its location and its role in one of rock’s most influential movements. To that end, Fletcher and his crew of tattoo artists from 3rd St. Tattoo were given carte blanche over the blank canvases of Abigaile’s walls to create the feeling that this space was home base for an entire scene. They studied the portion of The Decline of Western Civilization that was shot inside the Church and recreated some of the graffiti that can be seen on the walls behind Ginn and Ron Reyes, Black Flag’s lead singer at the time, during their interview. They also added their own touches including posting reproduced flyers from some of the hardcore shows in and around the South Bay and LA during those years.

Abigaile is a client of Wicked+. Wicked+ was tasked with conceiving all brand identity for Abigaile, including its name and logo, and has been tasked with PR and marketing for the restaurant. To learn more about Abigaile and its distinctive take on the new American brasserie experience, visit abigailerestaurant.com.

In case you missed it, these shows actually happened. Keep that in mind as you appreciate the design of the flyers. Some of the lineups are just incredible and, at times, confusing (Soul Asylum opening for Husker Du in 1986? Interesting…).

See a gallery of selected flyers below and make sure to visit his site to see more as they become available.

Have you ever wanted to try a product before buying it? Thanks to Beverly Hills startup ybuy, now you can. For $24.95 per month and no shipping costs you get one new hand-picked item every 30 days. If you like the product, apply the $24.95 toward purchasing it. If you don’t, simply return it.

All available products are curated and rated as the best in their respective categories by ybuy experts. From a $629 Breville Barista Espresso Machine with 15 bar Italian-designed thermoblock pump to the $399 Dyson Hot Fan Heater, you’re sure to find something worth trying out for $25 per month.

Go to ybuy to see what products are available this month.

\via Thrillist

Eight Singapore indie coffee shops, along with digital creative agency Antics and blogger Cortadito.sg, have put a spin on the standard loyalty card with the Be Disloyal disloyalty card. Cafe customers can pick up a “Be Disloyal” card from one of the participating shops, and the card is stamped each time they purchase coffee from one of the other seven cafes. Once the card is full, they return to the original shop to receive their free coffee. The collaboration is a great way to encourage people to discover the independent shops while uniting the cafes as they compete against the bigger coffee chains.

\ via Springwise.com

Conventional wet shaving not only provides the closest shave possible,  but nothing beats the luxury or pleasure of lathering up a quality  badger brush and shaving in a traditionally masculine way.

The Baxter of California Shave 1.2.3 kit provides all the essentials, less the razor, you need to achieve the absolute best shave possible. The Badger Hair Shave Brush is made with soft and durable 100% “Best Badger” hair that will provide you with years of great shaving. Badger hair has a superb ability to retain water that helps create a rich lather when mixed with a shave cream and improves the barrier between the razor and skin, lifting facial hair to ensure a smoother shave with less irritation.

Baxter’s Super Close Shave Formula offers a protective cushion between the skin and razor, for a close shave without redness or irritation. Antiseptic and botanical extracts refresh and soothe skin. The jar it comes in allows ideal application with the Badger Hair Shave Brush.

Finally, Baxter’s After-Shave Gel is soothing, alcohol free formula that hydrates and protects skin as it combats the serious dryness caused by daily shaving.

Priced at $70 and packaged nicely, the Shave 1.2.3 makes for a great holiday gift and offers a significant savings compared to buying each product separately.

Buy Baxter of California Shave 1.2.3 Online

Created by custom bike studio The Tarantulas out of Portland, ”The Natural” is a cafe racer motorcycle featuring a stalwart brushed metal look based off a 1976 Honda CB750F SS.

From their site:

“Started as an abandoned bike, was taken to the garage and we immediately started pulling all the useless crap off it. The plan was to create a bike that was “Natural” – brushed metal, gum rubber and leather looking vinyl was used.”

The bike features custom clip-ons, rear cowel with oil tank and battery box, headlight ears, levers and hard lines done by James Crowe at Crowe Customs. Seat upholstery done by Ginger at New Church.

More photos below and at TheTarantulas.net.